Brush Pass
by ShanghaiLily
Summary: Hey there! Welcome to my entry into the soulmates AU (you can find this fic along with other authors' reincarnation AUs on AO3, in the VM series called 'Five More Minutes').  This is a 1940's WWII spy fic, but really, it's just a great excuse for Logan/Veronica to have frantic sex in inconvenient places all around Europe. There's political intrigue! And smut! And NO beta!
1. Chapter 1

**WARNING/HEADS UP: Since this takes place during WWII, spy Logan has to hang out with a lot of Nazis, so be prepared for period-appropriate ethnic slurs (i.e. Gypsy instead of Rroma). I don't linger on them, but I don't shy away from them either. I'm Jewish, so I felt like it was irresponsible to do a WWII AU and completely gloss over the Nazi stuff. There won't be anything too graphic though, because this is a sexy spy fic, not a sad Holocaust fic. Think: Inglorious Basterds meets The Americans, with a dash of James Bond.**

* * *

 _Brush Pass:_

 _a brief encounter where something passes between agents in a public place_

 _that should never be seen._

* * *

 **LISBON**

 _ **August, 1944**_

Perched on the corner of the sprawling Praça dos Restauradores, a wide, central avenue that ran along the perimeter of a small but busy square, the Aveneida Palace Hotel could be easily reached from a large number of adjacent rooftops. The grand, white-washed building was tucked far enough away from the main center of Lisbon to lessen the possibility of collateral damage, but still close enough to offer the shooter enough crowd cover for an easy escape.

They would be spoiled for choice.

Bertolt Pfannmüller was what the OSS liked to refer to as a 'soft target'. He wasn't a person of interest, didn't have the ear of anybody important and would barely have made a blip on the OSS radar, were it not for the serendipitous location of his government desk job.

And that specific desk happened to be on the same office floor as Adolf Ziegler's, Hitler's favorite painter and president of the Chamber of Culture - the division of government responsible for the location and destruction of _Entartete Kunst_ , which could be loosely translated in English as 'degenerate art'.

Logan Echolls dragged his index finger around the rim of his poorly made Gibson, trying his best to clear his mind of the OSS sniper waiting just across the street, perched and ready for action.

He didn't know where he was hidden, and he didn't want to know. There were reasons honeypot operatives (oh, how he hated the nickname) were kept in the dark about their armed counterparts, beyond the obvious teeth-scraping discomfort of knowing that they were walking directly into a possible firefight and putting their lives in the hands of a person they'd never met before. One hesitant step or a stolen glance in the wrong direction could tip off the mark, not just bungling the mission but putting American lives in danger. Most notably, their own.

As the pale, slightly-overweight arts finance minister with modified Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, droned on about the evils of Freud and Jewish mind control, Logan dutifully nodded his head, feigning an intense level of interest not felt since his first time seeing a live woman naked.

He had already been forced to sit through two hours of lectures about the 'interior races' and German Exceptionalism, and his patience was wearing thin. If his unit didn't wrap this up quickly, he might just walk into the line of fire by choice.

But, he couldn't deny the sense of pride he felt in himself, a sensation so foreign to him it was like wearing a stranger's clothes.

It was ironic, he knew, since the entire English-speaking world had practically been showering him with accolades simply for existing. But this - the one accomplishment he actually felt proud of - they could never know about. It would be his alone.

Growing up under the harsh glare of Hollywood Boulevard, everybody knew Logan Echoll's story. From his famous parents' storybook courtship to his father's arrest for murdering Logan's girlfriend, an act that drove his glamorous mother - and several of her most devoted fans - to suicide, every gory detail of Logan's most painful and private moments had been splashed all over the tabloids since the day he'd emerged screaming into the world.

When Logan was 16, his father, Aaron, stopped putting the strap to his back long enough to shove a tin sword into his hand. He said they were going to spend some quality time together, but what he really meant was that the studio wanted to make a sequel to 'The Buccaneer', called 'Son of The Buccaneer'. They thought audiences would love it if the 'son' were played by Aaron's real son. They weren't wrong.

A decade passed quickly, with so much momentum he could barely breathe much less make his own choices. At least, that was before her.

'Some Girls Are' was scheduled to be a 35 day shoot off the coast of the Yucatan, a sexy 'meet-cute' about three society girls on a leisure cruise in Hawaii falling in love with three young sailors stationed at Pearl Harbor. Lilly Kane arrived four days late to set, slightly drunk, and was so damn charming that even the stodgy director couldn't hold a grudge.

Logan was in love, and - by some miracle - he managed to get her to love him back. Luckily for their relationship, audiences seem to love them together too, and they soon became on onscreen team, shooting five movies together over the course of three years.

Pretty soon, his whole world narrowed down to just work and Lilly, and he was a happier man for it. But just as sudden as her appearance was in his life, she was gone. Cut down in her prime by an aging matinee idol, who viewed his own son as both his greatest accomplishment and as the living embodiment of his own mortality.

Logan wasn't sure if his father went to his house with the intent to kill Lilly, but she still ended up face down in a swimming pool like a bad Hollywood cliche. And Logan - being the fiancé - was named the prime suspect.

But being filmed in front of 30 crew members was as rock solid an alibi as one could get, so he was quickly cleared. And, when his mother produced a missing ashtray from Logan's living room that she'd found in the trunk of Aaron's car, covered in what later proved to be Lilly's blood type, an arrest was quickly made.

The papers said his father went mad, claimed he was high on drink or speculated he must've been drugged without his knowledge. America was in shock at what Aaron had become. But Logan knew this who he really was, who he had always been. He has the scars to prove it. And so he did, in court, and the world followed every detail with hungry devastation.

When the verdict came back and his father was acquitted, Logan hid in the back of the kindly sheriff's office and wept.

The man was was patient with him, wrapped an arm around Logan more easily than his own father ever had. He told Logan that Lilly's death wasnt his fault, that Logan couldn't have predicted what would happen that night, any more than he had reason to suspect she would be killed any other night he might have been working. That it was true, didn't make it any less a cold comfort.

By the time Lynn Echolls jumped from the walkway of the Coronado Bridge, Logan had run out of tears.

So, a month later, when Uncle Sam came knocking, and offered Logan the opportunity to save lives in the real world the way he did onscreen, he jumped at the opportunity. Little did he know it would mean playing his most challenging role yet: the absolute worst version of himself imaginable.

* * *

 _A female hand roughly dipped down the back of Logan's trousers, fastening a shirt made of a thick, girdle-like material between his legs._

 _Normally, he'd never find a reason to complain about a woman palming his groin, but Mac - the oddly-named, 'technology cobbler' sent to kit him out - was being more than a little rough, and it wasn't in the good way._

" _Buy a girl a drink first, will ya?" He inhaled at the pinch of the snaps, trying his best not to shrink away from her grasping, icy-cold fingers._

 _"Aww, am I making you blush?" She straightened the waist of his pants like a mother hen, then folded her arms across her chest and took a long, appraising look at him. "Thought you were supposed to be some kind of lothario?"_

" _I take it you're not a fan?" He raised an eyebrow, vaguely amused. It wasn't often his charms had no effect on a woman. "More the bookish type, are you?"_

" _More like…the sewing circle type." She paused, waiting for a reaction that never came._

 _He's not sure what she was expecting him to say. Half the women in Hollywood were closet lesbians. "Some of my best friends are seamstresses."_

 _Mac smiled faintly and pressed her fingers to the front of his chest to test out the tensile strength of the vest. "Don't go getting brazen with this. It's not a flak jacket, it's only thick enough to protect you from a blade….and a dull one at that." She stood back up and considered her work, index finger tapping against her bottom lip in thought. "The jacket should probably still fit, but you're going to look thinner under your clothes."_

" _My producers will thank you for that." He stretched his pecs to test the tension of the garment, it didn't have a lot of give. "How do you women wear girdles?"_

" _We women don't all wear girdles. Some of us enjoy the act of breathing unemcumbered." She handed him a crisp, white dress shirt, and left him to do up his own buttons._

 _He fumbled with the first few, a symptom of his frayed nerves, then took a deep breath and fastened the rest through sense memory._

" _Well, we can just forget about the mic." Mac scrubbed a frustrated hand through her bobbed hair and frowned. "The hot spots Weevil made around the the bar should pick up most of your conversation, but you're going to have to speak up. Big Daddy is not going to be pleased."_

" _If six seasons of Summer stock taught me anything, it's how to project my voice." He offered up his thousand watt smile. If that didn't lift her mood, he was out of tricks._

 _She stared flatly at him for a moment before one corner of her mouth picked up very slightly as she popped a pair of radio frequency cuff links into his sleeves. "They said you were funny."_

 _He pulled on a light weight dinner jacket and ran his hands over the lapels to brush off the lint. "Well, dad did say to always leave 'em laughing. Of course, he turned out to be a murderer, so…guess not everybody got the joke."_

 _Mac produced a gold rectangular cigarette case from a fabric bag and slipped it into the interior breast pocket of Logan's jacket, then rapped the metal covering his heart. "Last guy who thought he was funny - an Agent we called Piz - took two to the chest in Düseldorf. Those rabbi walks-into-a-bar jokes don't really play around those parts the way you'd think."_

 _Logan shrugged, determined not to show any fear. "Not everybody's got my timing."_

" _I'm glad to hear you've got good timing, because you're gonna need it." She pulled a cube-shaped box from her bag and opened it, facing him. "This is something we call a digital watch. It has a jump-hour mechanism that flips the cards to the exact minute - you may have seen something like it at some train stations? It takes away a lot of the guesswork as far as operations go, because we're all synced up." She flashed a matching watch on her wrist. "Helps avoid nasty surprises, like being accidentally shot in the head if you walk outside a minute too late."_

 _A chill ran though Logan's body, despite the extra layers he was wearing. "You said you were starting me off small, that this was a starter mission."_

" _The mark is not SS. That's small as far as we're concerned. Big Daddy usually doesn't get out of bed for anything less than a black shirt."_

 _Logan wrinkled his nose as she closed the band of the watch around his wrist. "Weevil? Piz? Big Daddy? I feel like I'm trapped in a bad Southern Gothic play. Are we really married to the name 'Big Daddy', or…?"_

 _Mac laughed, for the first time that afternoon, finally breaking the tension in the air. "Agent V will get a kick out of that one. He actually is her dad and he's been trying to make that nickname happen since she was a kid. She thinks it's an abuse of power but Agent K calls the shots so we're kind of stuck with it as long as he finds it funny...even if he's the only one who does. Which he is."_

" _Then I'd like to be called Admiral Moneybags."_

" _Code names are no joke, Logan, we use them because we have to. If you get caught, we don't need the whole unit getting burned."_

" _I would die before I would give up names," he said, feeling irrationally angry at the implication. He'd run across a lot of resistance when he first been approached by the OSS about joining, but assumed he'd won the naysayers over. Why would they put a guy into the field whom they felt they couldn't trust? "I'm no snitch."_

 _She held her hands up in a mea culpa. "That wasn't an attack on your character. This is war. There are no gentleman's agreements when it comes to outing spies. And, let me tell you, these Nazis are some nasty pieces of work. They've gotten very creative with their interrogation techniques. With enough time, they can get anybody talking. Better you can't tell what you don't know."_

 _His brow furrowed at her words. She made sense, and he was glad it wasn't a specific lack of trust in him that kept him in the dark, but on some level it still stung. "Good lot that rule will do to protect me. Everybody already knows who I am. I'm going in naked."_

" _True. But, we couldn't get a meeting with any of these people before you fell into our laps. It's lucky for the OSS that the SS are such star fuckers." Mac's eyes lingered on him for a while, her expression slowly softening into a look of fraternal affection. "Your sacrifice has not gone unnoticed."_

 _The way Mac eschewed sentimentality, earning a comment like that from her felt bigger than a ticker tape parade._

" _I'm just doing my part for the war effort, same as every other able-bodied man." Logan caught his image in the mirrored closet door and let out a shuddered breath. He reminded himself that he was wearing a costume and that this was a just role, exactly the same as every other one he'd played before. "It's just strange not to know the scope of the mission - this feels like shooting scenes from a script out of order without knowing the whole plot of the film."_

" _Even I don't know the entire mission," she said, touching her own chest for emphasis. "Think of us as an Olympic relay team. You don't look behind you when you're running fast or you could trip yourself up. Just look ahead. Pass the baton. Trust your team. That's how you win a race."_

" _You're saying you really don't know anything?" He cocked his head, eyebrow raised in disbelief._

" _I'm saying we all know exactly as much as we need to know to do the job we've been hired to do - and no more. Every operation is 'eyes only'. It's safer that way for everybody." She straightened his collar and took a step back to take in his final look. "We're all just cogs in one great big machine."_

" _I'm a cog?"_

" _You? No, Admiral Moneybags. You're the grease that gets this whole contraption moving."_

* * *

With its soaring, arched ceilings and mirrored walls, the opulent lobby bar at the Aveneida was still an impressive sight, even with the supply shortages. And though the establishment hadn't been able to keep the standard of upkeep it had been previously famous for, nobody ever complained. Any expectation of luxury vanished with the elimination of the French Zone Libre. People just considered it an indulgence not to be speaking German.

By the stroke of noon the house was usually packed, but Wednesdays were lighter than most. Crowded enough not to draw suspicion, but clear enough for the room to be controlled.

Pfannmüller was still talking a wide streak, now prattling on about the Aryan beauty of Lauren Bacall in a thick Sudetenland accent. "Have you ever met her?"

"Once or twice." Logan amused himself with the knowledge that at this time last year he'd actually been a guest at the woman's Passover seder.

For most people who still had their humanity intact, this would be a difficult task, keeping a straight face while dining with the enemy. But Logan had spent his entire life suffering the company of loathesome individuals.

He'd endured two decades living with an abject sociopath, only to be thrust unwillingly into the grasping hands of the Hollywood Studio system. With that experience under his belt, having drinks with a Nazi felt just like any other lazy afternoon.

"Obrigado, Señhor Echolls." The person who had been serving them, a barman with a glaring lack of hair and an even more obvious lack of bartending knowledge, placed a small silver tray containing the bill in front of Logan. "It is an honor to have you here with us today."

The bald man caught his eye and subtly glanced at the price written at the bottom, before turning away to polish a nearby section of the hammered copper with a brown chenille rag.

 _1,49 Escudos_

The number was underlined, with an erroneous comma.

Logan had already figured the barkeep to be a plant, due to his spectacular inbility to mix drinks, so that had to mean the number on the bill was the time he needed to have the Nazi outside in front of the building's entrance. Mac told him the signal would be fairly obvious.

He checked his wrist watch: _1:41pm_

The OSS clearly wasn't too concerned about giving their operatives much lead time. He'd have to wrap this up quickly.

As he reached for his wallet to settle the bill, Pfannmüller lifted the slip of paper off the tray and glanced quickly at it. "149? You ordered Gibsons. That nincompoop brought you two martinis."

Logan tried to take the bill back, but the other man held it defiantly to his chest. "Well, he charged us for two martinis, so I suppose that's fair."

"No." Pfannmüller let his free hand fall to the bar with a loud slap. "The service was dreadful. We should be compensated."

The clock above the bar read _1:43pm_.

The bartender's hand tightened on the rag as he continued to clean, the only indication he'd been listening in. Logan would have to think of something fast if he was going to make the rendezvous on time.

He took a deep breath and forced a laugh. "You honestly expect them to know the difference between a Gibson and a martini? They're barely a civilized people."

Pfannmüller released the scrap of paper onto the plate as his ruddy face split into an unsettling smile. "You are quite right, Herr Echolls. We should not expect what is not within their abilities. It's only sets one up for disappointment, ja?"

"That's right." Logan repressed the urge to hail another drink to wash the rising bile from his throat. "Besides, it's not like I can't afford the price difference. In fact, if you'd allow me the honor?" He pulled some change from his pocket and tossed it on the tray with an arrogant flourish. "Good company is worth a bit of a surcharge."

"Danke schöen." Pfannmüller nodded his appreciation at the crass show of wealth. "You know, Der Führer was happy to hear that a man with your notoriety and stature was a vocal supporter of the the Nazi arts council."

They walked amicably past both gilded fixtures and gilded women toward the front of the room.

"Was he now? That certainly is flattering to hear." Logan wordlessly signaled to the maitre'd that they were ready for their coats. "I think it's important to spread the right message to the world, especially in such uncertain times."

"Well, he is a very big fan of your work," Pfannmüller continued, "particularly der, um, Säbelrassler?" He mimed a sword fight and chuckled at his own antics.

"The Swashbuckler?" Logan suggested, trying hard not to be disgusted by the idea of Hitler enjoying anything he might have done to entertain people.

"Ja! He has seen all of the sequels." Pfannmüller received his coat from the small Portuguese woman working the coat room, without making eye contact or speaking to her. "If you are ever in Berlin, we can organize a subversive book burning in your honor. Perhaps Kafka or Heinrich Heine? Unfortunately, we burned most of the extremist artwork in 1938 and the rest we've sold off in Swiss auctions to pay for the war effort. As I always say, if the Swiss want to be neutral, then let Dali corrupt their people as they pad our coffers."

Logan had heard rumors of bonfires being built with priceless kindling - Picasso, Miro, Van Gogh, Chagall - but this was the first time he'd gotten verbal confirmation of it. His mother, a dedicated art buff, would've wept at the news. "A book burning? That sounds like something I might enjoy."

"Wünderbar!" Pfannmüller beamed a shark-like grin.

Logan was beginning to see what Mac had meant when she described the Nazis as being a 'bottomless cesspool of weird'.

The coat check woman handed Logan his belted canvas trench, along with a wide smile.

"Obrigado." Logan nodded, returning the smile, which earned him a slight eyebrow raise from the Nazi standing in front of him. If ingrained manners were the thing that got Logan killed one day, at least he could say he went out with class.

Logan glanced at his watch just as the minute box flipped to _1:48pm_ , then extended his arm, guiding the other man through the rotating doors and onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

If the guy hadn't called gypsies vermin; if he hadn't claimed that jazz was a secret political plot by New York Jews to overthrow German culture; if he hadn't praised the burning of priceless pieces of artwork simply because they encouraged free thought and personal expression, then this could be just another stroll down the promenade.

But unfortunately for Pfannmüller, he was a dedicated worker toward bringing about the ideals of the Nazi cause and had made the fatal mistake of accepting a lunch invitation from a man who had a strong stomach for vengeance and a keen desire to see men who preyed on the blood of innocent people get their cummupance.

After what his father did to Lilly, Logan had no mercy for violent bullies. Every moment they spent free on the streets was another life put in danger.

Steeling himself for the deed, Logan took a deep breath and smoothed his hands down the front of his coat. He lifted the ends of his sash belt and tied them into a double knot, pulling the second loop hard.

That was the signal - one knot - and it was the difference between this man living or dying.

Logan followed Pfannmüller quickly, pushing through the glass turnstile, taking the first steps into his strange, new life like Alice down the rabbit hole.

A gust of wind blinded Logan momentarily as he caught his bearings. He could do this. He _would_ do this. He'd help the government kill as many murderers as it took if it would help save lives. He may have been too late to save Lilly, but he'd never be late again.

His hand shook as he looked at his watch, he was exactly on time. _1:49pm_.

Logan pulled the gold cigarette case from his left, breast pocket and silently angled it in Pfannmüller's direction, offering the man a final cigarette.

"No, thank you. I don't smoke," Pfannmüller held his palm up, politely refusing.

"Probably better that way." Logan pressed a cigarette between his lips and let it hang there for a moment, then replaced the case and pulled a pack of matches from his hip pocket. "My doctor is convinced these things will kill you." He rolled a single match between two fingers, then scraped his thumb nail against the phosphorous end and ignited it on the first try.

At that moment, a bullet tore through the skull of the man standing next to him, spattering Logan's trench coat with blood like an expressionist painting.

Pfannmüller probably would've organized a party to watch it burn.

Logan let the wind take the match, then fell to his knees next to the body and did his best approximation of Munch's 'Scream', as one hand lifted the dead man's wallet and keys from his suit pocket.

* * *

By the time Logan reached Adega Machado in the Alfama section of old Lisbon, he was convinced he'd need to be airlifted out of the area.

The brightly-painted buildings that lined the narrow streets of the quaint but disheveled neighborhood lurched inward due to a catastrophic earthquake that hit the city hundreds of years ago, contributing to a constant sense of vertigo. And those streets were made impossibly dizzier by a messy layout that Logan could only compare to a drunk city planner throwing a handful of pulling taffy on the floor and using it as the basis for urban development.

To make matters worse, it was poorly lit. Economic cutbacks from the war meant the very few electric lamps that did exist were almost never turned on. And so, Logan was just happy to have found the restaurant at all before the armistice.

Luckily, he could hear the place before he could see it, the rueful melody of an acoustic guitar drifting down the alleyway, accompanied by a melancholic moan that weaved its way in and out of the chords with no particular reason or direction. Like following the Pied Piper, he tracked the music to its source.

Whatever he found at the other end had better include a well-stocked bar.

After his statement to the police and an hour-long shower scrubbing the blood off his hands, Logan had spent the rest of the evening roaming the streets to clear his head. He may not have been the one to pull the trigger, but he was partially responsible for killing a man that afternoon. And despite what the newspapers had speculated about him after Lilly's death, the idea of murdering somebody didn't sit well with him, no more than the average man.

But, he would still get up tomorrow and do the same thing again if he had to, conscience be damned. It's what he signed up for.

However, he was about to the meet the person directly responsible for Pfannmüller's death and maybe that would put things in perspective for him? Mac told him he would rendezvous and debrief with another agent over dinner at 2100 hours. The agent would be dressed in something yellow.

He wasn't expecting a woman, much less a girl who looked like a teen playing dress up in her mommy's closet. But she was the only one in the restaurant still sitting by herself - bare legs crossed at the knee, wearing a canary-colored sundress and matching yellow cardigan - it had to be her.

Logan assumed she was legal (if only just), but it still didn't sit right with him. The OSS had a flexible morality when it came to a lot of things, but they weren't child-peddlers. Either way, the home office was going to being getting an earful about it later. Just because the girl knew how to shoot straight didn't mean it was right for her to be taking care of hits.

His only hope was that she was professional enough not to bother him all night with questions about his films. The promise of equanimity was one for the reasons he'd enlisted in the first place.

As he ambled warily toward the table, closing the distance between them, he caught a an amused glint in her eye, as if she could almost hear what he was thinking about her and found his discomfort cute. She was patronizing him. Maybe she wasn't so young after all?

He took a closer look. She wasn't wearing much makeup, and her golden-brown hair was pinned simply at the sides, falling into natural waves that cascaded just past her shoulders, like Ava Gardner. He was used to seeing more artifice on women, especially the broads in his hometown. Perhaps, that's what threw him?

He reached for his Stetson at the same time she leaned forward and nudged the empty chair across from her with the ball of her foot. "Darling, you're late!"

The hostess turned with an outstretched hand and relieved him of his hat, then snapped her fingers, summoning a passing busboy who took immediately lifted it from her hands.

The woman in yellow stood up to greet Logan as he approached the table and something in her expression - something knowing - stopped him dead in his tracks.

And that was it.

Much like the day Lilly Kane sauntered onto his beachside set with bloodshot eyes and a cheeky grin, Logan knew this moment was important.

The agent was a contradiction; she had the face of a babe, and though her bright blue eyes were vibrant and full of fire, they had lived a thousand different lifetimes, much like his own.

Logan swallowed dryly and forced a smile. "Just trying to be fashionable."

"Don't tell me you forgot your coat again? Honestly, he'd lose his head if it weren't attached," she said, looking on him fondly before sharing a laugh with the hostess. Her hands fell onto his biceps for leverage as she lifted herself onto her toes to press a kiss onto each of his cheeks, lips softer and warmer than they looked.

"This is why man need wife," the hostess said, playing along cordially.

The agents fingers slipped over the curves of his arms and grasped at his hands, sending a warm jolt through him at the feeling of her touch. "Is that the reason, Logan?"

"I can think of a few others," he said, enjoying the sound of his name on her lips, and without thinking, leaned forward and bussed his mouth lightly against hers, a hint of a kiss.

Her eyes widened at his brazenness, but she quickly recovered. "….and yet, you're still late to meet me."

Okay, she was actually angry about this. What did she expect him to do? Show up to dinner looking like a grisly attempt at pointillism? He needed to shower and didn't realize he'd need five hours lead time and a sack of breadcrumbs to find the joint.

In reality, he'd probably had plenty of time to get there for their meeting, but something about actually seeing the person who helped him commit murder made it feel all the more real.

Logan shrugged and shot her a poor facsimile of an apologetic smile. "Sorry Pookie. Traffic was just murder."

 _Pookie._ That was his parole word. It was supremely embarrassing to say out loud, but it was definitely not something that would generally come up in normal conversation.

A slight adjustment in her expression told him she registered the code.

"Murder, huh?" Her fingers tightened around his and she leaned in conspiratorially. "I hope you brought me something good to make up for your tardiness, _Buster_."

Buster. That was hers. They were a match.

"I always do." He produced a small gift-wrapped box from his sport coat pocket - the 'take', a copy of the dead man's office key and identification papers inside - and placed it in the center of her hands. "Am I forgiven?"

Her eyelashes fluttered as she examined the ornate box, before glancing up, forehead wrinkled. "Gift-wrapped? You really _shouldn't_ have."

"Oh, I don't know. Civility may have fallen by the wayside, but I still subscribe to the William of Wyndham's belief that manners make the the man."

Her lips parted in an aborted laugh as she quickly secured the box into a straw totebag. "Then, I will save this to open later when I can thank you privately, because I have manners, too."

The hostess looked between them, features pinched in confusion, then walked around them and silently dropped two menus on the burgundy tablecloth. "I come back later, señhor?"

"That depends on how hungry my lovely wife is?" He held the chair out for his dinner companion before taking a seat himself.

"Your lovely wife is always very hungry." The agent shook out her fabric napkin and placed it on her lap. "And not very picky. Unlike some people. Would you like a Gibson, darling, or are you okay with the wine I ordered?"

Logan lifted a questioning brow. He knew the bar had been bugged, but he never really thought about who might be listening on the other end.

"Maybe you'll get it exactly how you want it, this time?" She smiled, and - _Jesus Christ_ \- she had the most perfect set of natural teeth he'd ever seen.

The hostess pulled a small spiral notebook and pencil from her apron. "You tell me."

The agent was obviously referring to his drink order at the Aveneida Hotel, which he'd sent back after the bartender - who turned out to be another agent, named Weevil - made it wrong.

He was perfectly within his right, since any bartender worth their salt would know that Gibsons are made with onions, not olives. Weevil should have done his research, coordinated ahead what Logan was going to drink. Pfannmüller would have been suspicious if a man like Logan hadn't noticed or commented on the wrong cocktail. "Is it really 'picky' to want a bartender to bring you what you ordered?"

"When there are soldiers eating spam rations in the Pacific theater, I think you can probably let one or two miniature onions slide, no?" She leaned forward, lips pursed for a rebuttal.

"There was a jar of onions sitting on the bar in front of me within reach, and considering how much they charge for a lousy Gibson there, you'd think they'd manage to include the only ingredient that actually makes it a Gibson rather than a martini." Logan glanced at the hostess, who lowered her pad, uneasily.

"Everybody's got to make sacrifices during wartime, Logan. For some, it's shoes or heat during the winter, for others, it's - you know - martini onions. I guess." She gestured to him and smirked.

"Not a martini, sweetheart, a Gibson. That's rather the point I'm trying to make, isn't it?" He smirked right back at her, sure to add the smug tilt to his lips that used to make Lilly want to throttle him. "But we all must do our part, I suppose."

"I come back for your order when you're ready…" The hostess shifted nervously in place.

"No, don't!" They both shouted at the same time, startling the woman.

"I go." She flashed a weak smile, then practically sprinted for the kitchen.

Logan watched the poor woman's retreating form and then razed his date with an accusatory glare. "Has anybody ever told you how great you are at staying inconspicuous? Seriously, you're a regular Nora Charles."

He noticed the open bottle of wine on their table, poured out a glass for himself and refilled hers.

"Is that supposed to make you Nick? Because I'm pretty sure he's probably man enough to drink his gin without cocktail onions." She rolled her eyes, lifting her glass to her lips, then leaned forward in her chair as if spoiling for a fight.

"That's seriously your barometer for masculinity?" His face scrunched up, wondering how the hell they ended up in this conversation.

She pressed her fingertips to her lips in thought. "Well, I mean, can you lift heavy objects? There's also that."

Logan stared at her in disbelief before throwing his napkin at her chest - which she somehow managed to catch mid-air despite being doubled over in laughter. "Where the hell did the company dig you up? Lemme guess - Mars? No wait! Neptune!"

Her jaw dropped abruptly and she shook her head, as if pulling herself from a reverie. "You are not what I was expecting, Logan Echolls."

"What were you expecting? A dilettante?" He hadn't meant to sound so defensive, but nearly everybody he'd met insinuated the same thing, and those who hadn't, probably had never seen his movies. He couldn't really blame them, he would have probably made the same assumptions were he in their shoes, but he was tired of being prejudged. "Look, I signed up for this shitshow, and I wouldn't have done it if I weren't prepared to get my hands a little dirty."

"If you think this is getting your hands dirty, then you're greener than I thought." The agent paused, as if she were about to say something else, but then took a sip of wine instead. "I know why you were late tonight. You probably spent hours wandering around the city, maybe halfway down the bottle, wondering if you'd done the right thing today, questioning if you were still a good person?"

"Wrong. I was never a good person," he said, a little too quickly, then drained the rest of his glass in one go. He refilled it with a shaky hand, the crimson wine sloshed over the lip of the goblet onto the white tablecloth beneath.

Her head tipped to the side as she stared at his face, expression unmoved. "Telling yourself that isn't going to make this job any easier, and it's definitely not going to make it true. You wouldn't be sitting here, if it were."

"Aww, is this concern? I'm flattered," his lips quirked into a smile, "but honestly, if you're trying to scare me—"

"—are you scared?" Her voice sounded a little too breathless for this spiel to only be about warning a rookie agent. But, he had his own demons to chase, she was welcome to hers.

"Am I scared?" Logan chuckled a little self-consciously, shrinking back slightly from the heat of her radiant stare. "I was practically born on the other side of the Rubicon, sweetheart. I wouldn't even know what it feels like not be just a little bit frightened by life."

The faint strains of a Spanish guitar started to play, accompanied by the mournful wail of a once-beautiful, middle-aged Fado singer, her face glazed over, seized by the spirit of the song.

He stared intently at the other agent, feeling not a little victorious by his ability to shock her into silence.

The woman sat up straighter and leveled him with furrowed concern. "To have experienced so much fear that you become numb to it is a double-edged sword, Logan, I honestly - well, I don't know whether I'm sorry for you or if I'm jealous."

That she would feel either of those things made him physically ill.

"Oh my God. Don't - don't—" he grimaced, then instinctively reached across the small table with his right hand, tentatively brushing the inside of her wrist with his fingertips. "Just - let's get really really lit tonight. Okay? Can we do that? I'll even drink my gin straight as an oblation to the war effort. Please? Can we please do that?"

When she tilted her chin up, the look of determination in her eyes made his breath catch in his chest. He wasn't sure yet what she wanted from him, but it was obvious she did want .

"Well, aren't you just the goddamn hero?" She quipped, her tone only halfway joking.

"That's me." He took a chance, letting his fingers slide gently across her hand, waiting tentatively for a response. "They'll be writing paeans about me back home by the end of the war."

"Dirty limericks count as paeans, now?" She smiled without looking up from where their hands met - his unspoken offer still unanswered - and slowly molded her palm to his.

Logan sagged with relief. In Hollywood, shitting where you ate was practically part of a star's contract rider, but none of the background extras were capable of killing him from 500 feet away.

He lifted her wrist to his mouth - enjoying the weight of her capable hand in his - and feathered his lips against her pulse point. Her fingers still smelled of gunpowder. "Anybody ever tell you you're a giant pain in the ass?"

She exhaled harshly and leaned into his hold. "Only everybody who's ever met me."

His lips parted, teeth grazed the thin skin over her blue veins and she giggled at the contact but didn't pull away. "So, what's your story?" He asked, with a cursory glance.

"When I was 19, a modeling scout discovered me at a San Diego strip mall selling ice cream cones for five cents a pop, down by the boardwalk." She scooted forward in her chair, and as she continued to speak, he could almost hear the smile in her voice. "Of course, I was too short to model, but central casting at Metro signed me up right away, and wouldn't you know it? My first job, I'm hired as a featured player on a shitty remake of Zorro. And that's when I saw him - Logan Echolls."

Her free hand framed his name in the air, and he let out a disgusted groan at her antics.

She continued, breathlessly. "I didn't think he'd notice me, but there was this one scene where he swashed when he should have buckled, and he fell directly on top of me. A meet cute, just like in one of his movies. We were married one month later. And now we're honeymooning in romantic Lisbon during the height of a brutal war. Couldn't you just die?"

Mouth agape, Logan was rendered completely speechless.

She slowly traced the gold band on his left hand with the tip of her index finger - the one that Mac had given him to wear this evening - and grinned, the very picture of innocence. "Well, you did ask for my story."

With a low scrape against the stone floor, his inched his chair closer. He leaned over, bridging the scant distance between them to whisper in her ear. "I didn't mean your cover story and you know it. Smartass."

She threw her head back and laughed, flashing those perfect teeth again. "You know the rules, Logan. I can't tell you anything personal about me, for both our safety."

His bottom lip pouted. "That hardly seems fair. You know everything there is to know about me. The entire world does. I'm at a disadvantage. Can't you at least answer some general questions?"

She rolled her head along her neck, clearly stalling for time, then finally dropped it to the side with a sigh. "Fine. But you know I'm not going to answer anything that's going to compromise national security, so don't bother."

"I wouldn't dream of it." His heart sped up, excited by the prospect of knowing this mysterious woman a little better. "So…is there a Mr. Secret Agent?"

Her brow pinched, seemingly puzzled by his line of questioning. "He'd have to be a pretty understanding guy to be okay with this lifestyle, don't you think?"

Logan look at her hand in his and gently twisted the matching gold band on her finger. "That's not a no."

"No," she huffed out a laugh. "Who the hell would want to get mixed up with me?"

He shrugged - the answer a green light as far as he was concerned - and took a chance, bringing her fingers to his mouth, pressing each one separately to his lips.

"Next question," he murmured against her skin when he was finished. "How'd a marginally nice girl like you end up in this line of work?"

"Marginally nice?" She gave him a flat look, then lightly kicked him under the table, losing her shoe in the process. But, before she could pull her leg back, he caught her foot between his thighs. Her breath hitched but expression remained stoic, not a trace of a blush.

He swiped the pad of his thumb against her arch experimentally, just to watch her squirm.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, composure strained, but still didn't break. "Let's just say I followed in my father's footsteps."

A shock of recognition rang through him. "Big Daddy!"

"Could you not?" Her face pulled a disgusted moue. "We're about to eat."

He smiled, triumphantly, and pointed at her. "You're Agent V."

"And you're Captain Moneybags," she teased, pressing her toes against his groin in retaliation. It wasn't sharp enough to hurt him, but the delicious friction she caused was almost harder to bear.

He was clearly overmatched.

"Admiral, actually. I earned that promotion, fair and square." He said, breathing through the contact, in an effort to tamp down his arousal.

"I'll bet you did," she purred, as she gently began to knead him to hardness with the ball of her foot.

Logan had no idea where this was going; if this was a game a sexual chicken, if she was toying with him or if this would actually lead to anything else.

But for the first time ever, he didn't even care what the outcome was.

Everything in his life before Lilly's death had been micromanaged and focus tested, and everything after had been one long free fall into a dark abyss. This - this controlled chaos - was something he could get on board with.

Her head pitched to the side, contemplating him for a moment. "I've been meaning to tell you, you were…professional. Earlier today. I was pleasantly surprised."

He couldn't deny her praise felt good. She didn't appear to be the kind of person who gave it away carelessly. "Did you think I was going to buy the farm out there?"

"If we're being frank…" without pausing what she was up to under the table, she casually took a sip of wine from her glass, "I thought that might've been the whole point of you coming here."

His heart stuttered at her words. If he was being honest with himself, that thought may have crossed his mind in his worst moments, but it didn't ring true. Not anymore.

He stilled her foot with his hand. "You thought I came here to kill myself?" He asked, barely over a whisper, as if voicing it would lend it more credibility.

She had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed by her accusation, but she still stood by it. "You were halfway done with the job, yourself, by the time you were recommended to the agency. Drunk and disorderly, fighting in public, driving while intoxicated…"

He released her foot and reached for her face instead, angling her chin up to meet his gaze. His fingers ghosted her jaw, barely touching, as if she were a ripe peach he was afraid he might bruise. "Look, I don't know who recommended me and I don't know why, but it was a lifeline, okay? I didn't take the job to end my life, I took it to save it."

"I always did wonder." She pressed her cheek into his palm, warm and solid, a satisfied look in her eyes.

Unable to handle the tension, Logan shot her a lopsided grin. "Or…maybe I just have a lot of anger I need to work out and figured I could do it better here without getting arrested?"

"Would you like to? Work that anger out?" She slowly licked her lips and he followed the motion with his eyes. "With me?"

Without breaking contact, Logan pulled a few coins out of his pocket and tossed them in the center of the table. "How about you, Pookie? Got some anger in there that needs working out?"

"Keep calling me Pookie," she grabbed his hand eagerly and pulled herself up, "and I will be furious."

* * *

Logan had done some strange shit in his time - some of it even when he was sober - but fucking a stranger in a dirty, dark alley of a sketchy neighborhood mere hours after murdering a man…that was a new one.

But then again, none of this was real. This wasn't actually him. It was just another role he was hired to play.

At least, that's what he planned to tell himself when the hangover wore off.

His trousers were around his ankles, bare ass exposed to the chilly Autumn air as he pressed into her from behind, stifling a groan into her hair.

The movie studio used to market him as 'the bad boy you could bring home to your mother'. Only half of that sentiment was true. They'd greased his way out of many sticky situations that would've ruined his career, and he'd paid for those ill-advised stunts with years of indentured servitude.

But this wasn't Hollywood, it wasn't even the real world. This place was just a fever dream frozen in time, like a Dali clock melting into the sand.

The night Lilly died - Logan's failure to save her life - it nearly killed him too. And the irony didn't escape him, that murdering a man today had been the only thing that was able to bring him back to life again.

A year of drugs, booze, sex and reckless fighting couldn't make him feel an ounce of what he'd felt today, as the nameless brunette in the yellow dress had led him by the hand into a nearby alley.

And if being with Lilly taught him anything, it had been to take first and ask questions later when it came to what was being given freely by a dangerous woman.

"Harder," the agent panted, hand slapping a patch of peeling, blue paint on the wall next to her head, where she had been bracing her arms. "Sometime today, would be good."

"You really are a sweet talker, aren't you?" Logan bent his knees and bracketed one hand over hers, then wrapped the other around her tiny waist, tugging her onto his lap until she bottomed out again.

"Shit! Yes, just like that." Her staccato breath echoed down the quiet street they were on, which was way too residential for Logan's comfort.

"Shush, you," he whispered into the shell of her ear, thrusting into her again. "I should've figured even fucking you wouldn't get you to shut up."

"If I thought fucking you was going to get me to stop making noise, then I would never have left the table with you." She bounced down on his cock, knocking the wind out of him - probably on purpose - then turned her head and huffed out a laugh. "I'm sorry, is my responsiveness distracting you?"

Her back tensed as he pressed into her again, a strangled exhale working its way from her throat. It was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in months.

He knew nothing about her, other than that she had a perfect smile, was good with a gun, and had a spot just below her ear on the side of her neck that made her squeal like a bunny whenever he licked it.

So he licked it again.

"Maybe some of us don't want to get arrested for being lewd and lascivious in public?"

She snorted. "You're worried about getting arrested for public exposure? I mean, considering what we got up to earlier—"

He cut her off with a thrust, and redoubled his efforts. "You're seriously making me rethink my personal policy on 'wet work'."

She tipped her head back and chuckled hoarsely against his cheek. "Maybe you should. You seem comfortable working wet."

Logan slid his hand down the satin expanse of her bare shoulder, then brought his palm to her mouth to keep her from saying anything else.

A surprised noise vibrated against his chest, but his pelvis rocked hard into her body before she could protest.

Short puffs of air against made him think she might be struggling to breathe, but when he tried to drop his hand, she quickly cupped it with her own and held it there, shaking her head.

She looked directly at him and his stomach quivered at the sight of her - face flushed and well kissed, eyes so dilated they shone black in the dim light of the street lamp, chestnut hair at the base of her neck curling with sweat.

Logan buried his face in the side of her neck and edged his teeth along the side of her tendon tongue pressing down firmly against her jumping pulse. Her life was in his hands, and he could end it with a simple bite. He'd made the same choice earlier today and he could make it again now.

She turned her face toward him and they made eye contact, then let her head fall back against his shoulder, almost daring him to do it.

With his other hand now free, he slipped it under her dress and let his fingertips graze above her entrance, pinching lightly. His cock pumping into her, slick and fast, velvet over steel. And as his arm tired and fell away, he noticed his palm was completely wet and had to breathe through the urge to come. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

"God!" Her face twisted up as she clenched hard around him, head still resting on his shoulder as she groaned against his jugular.

He barely had time to pull out of her before he followed over the edge.

* * *

 **A/N: So, that happened. As some of you know, I'm really insecure about writing smut, so this is an exercise in masochism for me.** **Hopefully, you're up for another chapter of it, because one is coming soon...and it's only getting dirtier from here.**

 **There are some characters who aren't listed but WILL appear. I don't want to ruin the surprise.**

 **My goal is to finish this by the end of December, because I'm starting grad school in January, so cross fingers!**

 **What do you think so far? I'd love to hear from you.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Heads up warning for period-era homophobic language and a rating alert for another explicit smut scene. Also, translations for Spanish dialogue appear at the bottom of the chapter.**

* * *

 **CÓRDOBA**

 _ **Late October, 1944**_

* * *

Five weeks passed before Logan would see Agent V again.

He thought he caught a glimpse of her in Malaga a week after their encounter, smoking with some Republic types on the fire escape of an apartment complex opposite his hotel. He'd been drinking Pims on the back terrace with a British diplomat when he saw her their eyes had met. But, the afternoon sun inauspiciously burst through the clouds like a ripe marigold, blinding his vision, and by the time his vision cleared she was gone.

Though Logan was most comfortable living the high life, there was something to be said about spending a week in an anonymous bedsit; doing recon and whiling away his downtime playing poker with the agent assigned to babysit him. It was a welcome respite from the energy it took to keep up his repugnant alter ego.

The man assigned to protect him was known to the OSS simply as 'the Weevil', for his ability to worm his way into any secure location. Mac claimed he was the best 'black bag job' man in the business. Not too surprising, considering it took the federal police nearly five years and sixty heists to catch up to the guy.

With a talent like that, it seemed a waste for him to spend the rest of his life rotting away in jail. The OSS seemed to agree - much to the FBI's chagrin - and gave him a choice between stealing for the government or breaking stones up at Sing Sing. Weevil traded in his prison stripes for a jacket and tie the very next day.

Logan sat barefoot, smoking in the windowsill, one leg dangling over the edge onto the fire escape. The last, fleeting moments of dusk cast its indigo light against the roof of the moorish mosque in the distance. With Autumn coming, the days were growing shorter, but the palm fronds were still a dark, verdant green, exactly how he'd imagined they still looked back at home in Hollywood. Those trees were the only thing that reminded him of his old life.

Weevil was cooking dinner for them on the stove, the scent of burnt cheese drifted over to his side of the room, pulling Logan's attention. "That smells—"

"—if you say ''like shit', you can starve tonight, Gibson," Weevil growled, not even bothering to look up from the pan.

Cooking was the other man's contribution to their living arrangement, and he was admittedly fairly good at it.

It was a deal they'd struck early on. Logan paid for their groceries and upgraded the quality of their booze from the pittance the government gave them to survive. And in exchange, Weevil kept them alive and well fed. Logan was pretty sure he had the better end of the deal.

Logan took one last drag off his cigarette and flicked it out the window. "I was going to say - familiar. That smells familiar." His brow creased in thought as he tried to place where he'd smelled it before.

A low chuckle echoed through the room. "That's because you've had it before, asshole. I was wondering how long it was going to take you to figure it out."

Logan stood up, padded across to the stove and peered into the pan. "Are those arepas? I don't get it."

The corners of Weevil's mouth turned up. "I told those idiots you wouldn't remember. They thought they were so clever putting us together, thought we'd be a love match. They don't get rich people at all. You guys could look at a person every day of your miserable, pampered lives and still not know them from Adam unless they got 50 grand in the bank." He added a dash of olive oil and flipped the arepas to brown the other sides.

A flash of sense memory filled Logan's mind - he was ten and had been crying all afternoon, hiding in the walk-in pantry. His father had taken a belt to him earlier for spilling a soda on the rug. His mother was passed out in the bedroom, courtesy a cocktail of pills and booze. It was dark by the time the family housekeeper found him, but she wiped his tears, held him through the last of his tremors and make him dinner. Arepas.

"Lettie." Logan stared at the pan, mesmerized. "She had a grandson about my age. I remember her always talking about him. That was you?"

Weevil nodded and turned off the gas. "That was me."

"I — I'm sorry. I don't remember your real name of if we've ever met, but I do remember her, of course. She was very kind to me during some times when I really needed it." Logan was suddenly embarrassed that he never looked into what happened to her after his mother died. Things had just been so fraught back then that he was barely able to make it out of bed.

"Yeah, that's her way." Weevil angled the pan so the arepas slid out - one on each plate - and handed one to him.

"Thank you." Logan stared at the plate. "Is she —" he cleared his throat and tugged nervously at his hair, "she's doing well, I hope? Was she able to find another job? I could—"

"—it's all okay." Weevil reached for two sets of silverware in the drying rack and gestured toward the small kitchen table. "Your mother, when she - you know - well, she took good care of abuela in her will. Left her enough that she could retire and buy our house. Your mom was a good lady." He paused for a small genuflect, punctuating the act with a kiss to the gold cross hanging from his chain.

Though a dyed in the wool atheist, Logan had always admired the religious. He figured it must be nice to still have the capacity to place so much faith in something. He'd been disappointed by way too many things in life to ever feel that way about anything anymore.

He smiled tightly, taking his seat. "I'm very happy to hear that." It was never easy to talk about his mother with anybody, particularly with somebody who had actually known what she was really like, beyond the public image. "Please send Lettie my regards next time you're able to organize a call home."

"Oh, hell no," Weevil said, choking on his first bite of food. "That ain't gonna play with her and you know it. You're gonna have to send those regards yourself or not at all. She already threatened my ass about you, wanted me to make sure you didn't get yourself killed. So, I'm gonna need some kind of proof of life or she's gonna have my head. She said it was our responsibility to keep an eye on you for your mother."

Logan swallowed down the lump forming in his throat and forced an eye roll. "Good to know everybody thinks I'm doomed for failure."

He finally bit into the arepa, closing his eyes to the first taste and the warm memories it brought with it.

Weevil stopped eating, held his fork mid-air, pointing it at Logan. "You haven't gotten anybody killed yet - at least, nobody that wasn't supposed to get killed - I'll give you that. But, if you know what's good for you, you'll stay far the hell away from Little Miss Bang-Bang."

"Little Miss Bang-Bang sounds like an off-Broadway musical about a Siamese hooker." Logan kicked open the ice box with his foot and leaned over to pull two bottles of beer from the unit, then slid one across to Weevil. "Should I assume that warning wasn't just a theater recommendation?"

"Don't play dumb, puta." Weevil popped the top off the beer with the edge of the table and brought it to his lips before it foamed over. "Agent V asked to see your personnel file."

"So? Maybe she wanted to wanted to know a little about the person she'd be working with? She's a professional, could be she just likes to do a thorough prep."

"She asked for your file _after_ the job." Weevil smirked at him before bringing the bottle to his lips again. "Her prep sounds real thorough, ese. And hey - no judgement. Once upon a time, I might've been down for some of that sweet, sweet prep, myself, but now that I know how looney she is, I can't say I'm mad I dodged that bullet."

A number of possibilities blurred through Logan's mind, which he tried to wash away with alcohol. "Doubt you could dodge one of her bullets, but that's cute."

Weevil stared at him, expression halfway between horrified and repulsed. "Making a punny joke? Trying to distract me? No lie, that's exactly something she'd do. Maybe you two are a match made in hell?"

"I met her for dinner, gave her the take, she insulted my masculinity and that was pretty much the extent of the evening's entertainment." Logan shrugged, hoping that would put and end to the interrogation.

Weevil looked thoroughly unconvinced. "Whatever you say, chief. Just take my advice and don't get attached. Girl's got a one track mind - and I'm talking about the job."

"What makes you think I'm even interested?"

"You ain't ask me a thing about her in a full month. Nobody has dinner with somebody like her and doesn't walk out of it with at least a few questions." Weevil scrubbed a hand over his smoothly shaved head. "That's a good lesson for you, Gibson. Acting like you don't give a shit is just as much of a tell as looking like you care a lot. No wonder you're shit at poker."

"I beat your ass last night."

"Lucky hand."

Logan flicked Weevil off, sending him into a fit of laughter.

"Listen man," Weevil started, lowering his voice into something uncharacteristically soft. "This can't end well for you. She's good people, but she is also the loaf of bread that didn't rise right."

"I'm not exactly the Baker's Pride, myself…"

"Agent V is on a mission, not just the one we're on. She's looking for something, maybe someone - I don't know what - but she'll keep at it until she finds it, even if it gets her killed in the process. Don't let her take you down with her." Weevil leaned forward on the table, expression grave. "I'm just trying to honor my promise to my abuela. I told her I'd keep you alive, okay?"

"I appreciate the effort, but I've got it covered." Half of him was outraged at the notion that this man assumed he needed such sheltering, but he couldn't deny that it felt good to know there was a person left on Earth who cared whether he lived or died.

"That's nice, but you've met my grandma, so you know this is happening whether either of us wants it to." Weevil shrugged and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, smugly resolute. "Just don't make my job harder and stay away from the small, crazy spy."

"How can something so tiny be so dangerous?" Logan asked, completely serious.

Weevil thought about it for a moment, then took a long pull of beer before answering. "All it takes is a few drops of cyanide to poison an entire well."

* * *

Logan was having al fresco drinks with Lanzo Castillo, a prominent Andalucian composer. The man was still quite dashing for his mid-40's, and incongruently glamorous in his crisp white suit and matching Panama hat for an afternoon sitting in a small town cafe in the aggressively plebeian Plaza de la Corredera square.

With its ancient mosques, Roman architecture and Byzantine mosaics, Cordoba had always been one of Spain's great centers of tourism. Post-Civi War, it was all but empty. Not hard to see how the senseless slaughter of 10,000 people might put visitors off a place.

A week after the untimely death of Bertolt Pfannmüller, a man by the name of Henrik Gehrhart, from the German Ministry of Culture, contacted Logan with a proposition. Apparently, before he'd died, Pfannmüller managed to get a call in to his department, where he sang Logan's praises, ironically anointing him a true friend of the Reich.

Gehrhart, sensing an opportunity, offered Logan a chance to join the cause, to use his contacts and influence as an international movie star to bring other glitterati into the fold. He apparently admired the military marches of Lanzo Castillo - interpreting his themes of Spanish unification as a similar call to unite all Aryans, much like Hitler's love of Wagner's Siegfried.

His desire was for Logan to persuade Castillo to donate some original work to the NSDAP. This was a war of culture - as he'd mentioned ad nauseum - just as much as it was a war of of steel and might.

Logan's real mission, however, had been to find out which other artists had been approached by the Nazis and who remained loyal to the Allied cause.

Castillo glanced around the room and took a sip of Tempranillo. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline, Mr. Echolls. And just so you don't think I'm playing favorites, I would say the same if the British had asked."

"Have they?" Logan sat forward in his chair.

"It's not in my best interest to divulge any conversation I may or may not have had with anyone from any country, wouldn't you agree?" Castillo leaned back and crossed his legs. "There's a reason Spain chose to stay neutral."

Spain was hedging their bets, which Logan could respect as a general concept, but not when American lives were on the line. "Well, the way this war is playing out, you may not have that luxury much longer, Mr. Castillo."

"Well," Castillo smoothed down the lapels of his suit and smiled bitterly. "With Franco in command, I won't be safe here much longer anyway. Spain's peace has proven more dangerous for me than her war, and I must soon find new home, irrespective of what happens between the Allied and Axis nations. There are some kind of men who are not welcome in this new regime." He raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I'm not sure I do. Are you saying you were a Republican?" Logan rapped his finger against his glass twice - in three beat increments - a signal over the wire to Weevil that the asset was potentially sympathetic to the allied cause. "Half the country was."

Still, this was good news. The British, French and American governments opposed Franco's Nationalist party, while Hitler and Mussolini supported it. If this man was a Republican, he would never work with the Nazis.

Castillo released a harsh laugh as a dark expression clouded his features. "Were it so simple, Mr. Echolls. I'm afraid it's much worse than that. It's more the company I choose to keep, and the company of one I kept, in particular."

Ah. So, Castillo was a homosexual.

The man smiled, genuinely this time, a faraway thing. "It's not what you're thinking…well, it's not _only_ what you're thinking." He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a faint whisper. "I was friends with the playwright."

The playwright.

He could only be speaking of one person: Federico García Lorca. Famously executed in Grenada in 1936 for vocally opposing the Nationalist party, his body never recovered.

It was forbidden to even mention his name under Franco's regime, much less own a copy of his work.

Logan was relieved he could report back to the home office with 100% certainty that Castillo would not be aligning with the Germans. Not in this lifetime.

"I understand." Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen, then scribbled a telephone number onto a spare napkin with the following note.

 _Call Parker Lee at United Artists._

 _She is a close friend._

 _She can get you work quickly._

 _Tell her I sent you and she will be_

 _especially sensitive to your visa situation._

He slid the napkin across the table and watched as Castillo cautiously picked it up.

The man looked at the small scrap of fabric like it was a lifeline and then slipped it into the inner breast pocket of his linen jacket. "You don't work for the Reich, do you, Mr. Echolls?"

Logan's face fell. This was the kind of stupid, sentimental mistake that men got killed over. He'd fucked this up, and Weevil was catching every word of it.

Tossing a handful of pesos on the table, Logan walked around to Castillo's chair. "Let's take a walk."

Castillo realized his mistake immediately. "I - I won't —"

Logan forced the man from his seat with the weight of his gaze. "It's a beautiful day for a walk, is it not?"

"Yes. Very beautiful." The man rose slowly, eying Logan warily, demeanor contrite.

They walked in silence around the perimeter of the wide, open plaza, pretending to admire the afternoon sunshine.

"Listen, pal," Logan said, in a conversational tone behind a bright smile. "You open your mouth and breath one word of what you _think_ you know about me, and I'll put a bullet in the back of your head myself. Do you understand?"

Castillo took a deep breath and echoed his smile. "On my life, sir."

"That's right. It _will_ be your life." And mine too. Logan scrubbed a hand over his face, mind racing for a way to correct his mistake. Weevil would have his head for this. "You implied earlier I'm not the first man to approach you?"

"There were others, yes."

Good. This was something Logan could work with. "You said before it wasn't in your best interest to tell me who they were, but I think we both know that's no longer true."

Castillo nodded his head, without hesitation. "I'll make a list."

"Names, physical descriptions, affiliations, anything you can remember about them."

"Yes."

"And, a list of your friends as well. Those who are loyal to our side."

This last request stopped the other man mid-stride. "I-I can't do that. With what you do, you must understand the need for protection."

"With what I do, I understand completely." Logan turned to him and leveled him with a glare. "With every name you give, every piece of intel, you keep the people I work with safe. And the more of us who stay safe, the more we can keep your friends safe."

"Between the last war and this one, I've often been disappointed by those I thought I could trust." The Spaniard pressed his fingers to his temple and sighed. "But, you gave me the name of your friend, Mr. Echolls, and if you trust me enough to risk your safety to do that, I think I can risk myself to give you mine."

"Good. You can call me Logan, by the way." Logan clapped the man on the shoulder. "And, I need you to laugh like I just said something hilarious."

The Spaniard tipped his head back and released a surprisingly convincing chuckle. This was clearly not his first rodeo.

"I don't suppose any of those friends of yours have an 'in' with the German government?" Logan joked, as he reached for his cigarette case and offered one to Castillo.

"Oh please," Castillo said, lighting both of their cigarettes. "Yes, we have allies. And do you think there are no fairies in the SS? You'd be shocked at the lengths some men would go to throw off suspicion. And anyway, if they aren't sympathetic to the cause, they can always be blackmailed into it."

If Gehrhart had any idea how dangerous this man really was to the Nazi cause, he would've asked Logan to put a bullet in him, not ask him out to tea. He exhaled a stream of smoke, absolutely floored by this man's gall. "That's risky."

"Anything worth its salt is risky. If it weren't, any idiot could do it." Castillo flicked his ash on the sidewalk and took another drag. "Shall we organize a dead drop with the man listening in on the other end of your wire?"

"Oh no. I think we need to bring you in. You've got too much intel in that head of yours to write down in a little love note." Logan couldn't stop his own smirk. "You know, I honestly can't decide yet if my birdwatcher is going to love you or hate you."

"Well, maybe you can smooth the way, then. Does he love or hate you?" Castillo dropped his cigarette to the floor and stomped it out.

"Probably a little of both."

"Fantastic." Castillo groaned, then threw his hands in air accompanied by a few Spanish expletives under his breath.

Right then, a loud popping sound caused both men to start.

"It came from the Northwest corner of the square," Castillo rasped out as he pulled them both behind the nearest pillar.

Logan noticed a small figure, dressed in beige with a black beret covering their hair, running across the slanted, sand-colored rooftops surrounding the plaza, as agile as a bobcat. "There."

Those legs. That ass. It was her. It had to be her.

A blood-curdling scream erupted from just through the arch of the next arcade.

His gaze continued to follow the figure as it climbed effortlessly over the terra cotta tiles from building to building until the roof ran out. It then scaled down three sets of terraces and dismounted onto the white stone floor of a thin alley way just across from them, landing with a loud crack. The figure remained motionless, lying there in a heap, a muffled moan escaped out before the body went totally limp.

A police whistle blew from just behind the next wall, pulling the attention of the tourists and townspeople.

"Shit." Logan turned to Castillo, eyes wide, as he ripped the micro-transceiver from under his shirt and placed it into the other man's hand. "I - can you stay in the area? Someone will come find you within the next hour? I need to—" He angled his head toward the body, wincing at the unmoving form.

"Go." Castillo nodded, fully understanding the situation. "We will be in touch soon, my friend."

Without a backward glance, Logan took off running in the direction of the fallen figure, slipping into the alley, mercifully unnoticed.

The person was beginning to regain consciousness, which didn't give him much time. He quickly pulled the scarf from the figure's face, confirming the woman's identity. "V"

There was a grainy, badly bent, black and white photo of a young man wearing an overcoat - it was lying on the floor next to her hand. Logan folded it in half and slipped it into his back pocket.

She stirred into vague consciousness, as he hoisted her into a bridal carry. "Come on. Wrap your arms around my neck."

Instead of what he asked, a firm hand closed around his throat and began to choke him.

"Hey!" He managed to grunt out before she completely cut off his airway.

Her eyes flew open, recognizing his voice, and she released her grip. "The gun," she whispered hoarsely, gesturing to the blood-drenched revolver she had strapped into a thigh holster.

He tugged the entire holster free and shoved it into her messenger bag, just as the cops filled the square. "We have to get out of here. Can you walk?"

She put her left foot onto the ground and gingerly tried to rest her weight on it, then grimaced.

"Okay. We're okay." Logan didn't quite believe it, but he'd figure something out. He'd have to, because a crowd of people were beginning to file into the area. "Smile. Pretend you're glad to see me," he said, lifting her back up into bridal carry and walking back out into the square.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. "What the hell are you—"

"I said smile." He pressed a long, passionate kiss to her lips.

An old woman with a head scarf made a disappointed clucking sound then turned to a nearby police officer who had also been watching them kiss. "Este no es el momento para el romance, los recién casados. Alguien ha sido herido."

Logan put on his best look of contrition. "Lo siento, señora."

The old woman grumbled a bit, but seemed to soften. "Me acuerdo de este sentimiento."

Despite the intimate nature of their last encounter, this was the first time Logan had actually ever kissed Agent V. He'd thought a lot about it over the last month, wishing he'd taken the chance when he had it last.

"How are you even here?" Agent V looked at him with wonder, palming his cheeks, checking that he was real. "You speak Spanish?"

He pressed his forehead to hers for a faint moment, then pulled away, a teasing smile lighting his face. "You should know that already, since you read my file."

Her mouth dropped open, cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but before she could eek out an excuse, Logan noticed a nearby cop and kissed her again.

"Señor, deberías llevar a tu esposa a casa, ahora." The policeman said, rolling his eyes.

Logan nodded to the man and carried her out of the square as an ambulance passed them in the other direction, sirens blaring. "I hope you have a safehouse somewhere close, because this newlywed routine is only going to play for so long before it starts looking fishy."

* * *

They didn't speak a word to each other until they were safely in the confines of Agent V's sparsely furnished bolt hole, down Paseo de Castellana. And even then, remained silent until Logan had swept the room twice for bugs, per the agent's great insistence.

He took one last look out of the window, then drew the blackout shades tightly closed and stood near her feet at the edge of the bare mattress, where he had just finished wrapping her ankle in gauze. "Are you still in much discomfort?"

She lifted her head a few inches, shot him a look of impatience, then fell back onto the pillow, eyes screwed tightly shut. "I think there might be some pain powder in the medicine cabinet."

Without delay, Logan closed the short distance to the bathroom, rummaged through the medicine cabinet for the bottle of aspirin, and reappeared through the doorway. "Do you have a glass?"

She shook her head and reached blindly for a bottle of sherry on the nightstand. "Don't need one. Just get me that bottle."

He grabbed the other bottle on the way to the bed, then perched on the side of the mattress next to her and handed her the open bottle of aspirin, which she tipped generously into her mouth.

"Woah! You'll overdose at that rate." He forcefully removed it from her grip, switching it out for the sherry.

She swished the liquor around in her mouth with the powder before swallowing both down with a full body shudder. Taking another swig for good measure, she handed the bottle back before wiping the powder residue off her lips with the back of her hand. "Thank you."

"Very lady like."

She cut him a stern glance then began to laugh through it. "That's your line? The killing people, climbing across rooftops, being covered in blood…that's all Lana Turner territory, but chugging painkillers with cooking sherry is a turnoff for you?"

"I'm beginning to think nothing you could do could be a turnoff for me," he said, very seriously, and pulled his legs up on the bed next to her so they were lying side by side. "It's very disconcerting."

"How unfortunate for you." She tried her best to look nonchalant about the compliment, but her shy smile betrayed her. Her fingers hesitated midair before reaching for his hand. "I would've been toast if you hadn't gotten me out of there when you did."

"True. And you're welcome."

"Logan?" A brief, frustrated expression alighted Agent V's face, before she carefully flipped onto her side toward his direction. "How did you know I'd be there?"

He shook his head, still staring at the crown moldings above them. "I didn't."

"Nobody sent you?"

"No. I was in the right place at the right time….or _wrong_ place, depending on what your perspective is." He cautioned a glance at her through the corner of his eye.

Her skin was ashen and streaked with dirt, but the most troubling thing about her was the look of mistrust that was brewing.

"You were right where I fell." She paused mid-breath, before continuing her thought. "Seems like an awfully big coincidence though, don't you think?"

He turned on his side to face her, still holding her hand. "Maybe it wasn't a coincidence?"

She rolled her eyes, fingers tensing in his. "You're not going to suggest it was fate, are you?"

"Lord, no." He tucked her hand under his cheek for safe keeping. "I've had way too much taken from me in my life to believe in some kind of pre-ordained, grand design. No God has that sick of a sense of humor."

It couldn't be a coincidence they were both in the same square in Córdoba at the same time on separate missions. Two members in one intelligence unit didn't accidentally blunder into each other's jobs like that for no reason.

And though Logan had never met the man in person, Big Daddy never struck him as the sloppy type.

It was obviously planned that they should meet up, but then why not just assign him to her case in the first place?

Something wasn't adding up, which Agent V sensed as well, though her mind was obviously going to darker places than his. "This just all seems very pat, no?"

"Who was your target?" Logan ran his index fingertip along the arch of her eyebrow, just under the ridge of her beret. There was a shallow scrape there he reminded himself to tend to later.

"You know I can't tell you that." Her eyes searched his face for signs of…something.

"Come on," he goaded. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?" It was obvious she would refuse, but he was morbidly curious to discover just how deep her suspicion of him really ran. "Or are you worried I'm a turncoat? Is that it?"

"No." Something very close to panic leeched into her tone as she struggled to sit up. "Of course not."

"Tell me your first name then?" He sat up to meet her. "How about just the first letter? Haven't I earned that much from you?"

"Logan." She shook her head 'no', like she was talking herself out of it. "Stop it."

He fisted the thin bedspread they were sitting on. "You don't trust me and we're on the same team!"

"I don't trust anybody and I have good reason not to. Frankly, I'm surprised you're still so free with your own trust, given what I've read about you."

"….and what have you read about me that the whole world doesn't already know?" The cruel set of her jaw set off alarm bells inside of him, and he reflexively braced himself for what he assumed would come next.

"That Lilly Kane wasn't exactly the doting fiancée she presented to her public. That she may have been dedicated to you, but that didn't prevent her from showing half of Hollywood a good time, including your father." V looked like she regretted it the moment the words left her mouth, but she'd already begun and she wasn't the kind of woman to change horses mid-stream. "She was quite the accomplished liar. And you're obviously a soft touch."

Logan's world went off-kilter for a second, ice water suddenly circulating through his veins instead of blood. He turned his head, pinching the muscle between his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his temper. "Yes, well, at least she told me her real name. At least I knew who's parents to tell the coroner to call when they came around. If you had been killed today, I would have had to just make something up."

The sound of V's ragged breathing grew louder, filling the room.

By the time Logan was able to stomach looking at her again, her face was wet with tears.

"I'm horrible. I'm sorry," she whispered, choking on a silent sob. "Sometimes I think I've been doing this so long, I've forgotten what it's like to be a real person - or how to talk to one."

He swallowed down the swell of empathy blooming in his chest. He'd always been too quick to forgive, too desperate to be loved. The tone of V's implication may have been caustic, but it wasn't wrong. "No, you were right. I am too trusting, I made that same mistake again today on my mission. I almost blew the entire thing because, like you said, I'm a soft touch."

She frowned at him quoting her own words back at her. "What happened?"

Logan thought back to the reckless overture he made to Castillo - giving him Parker Lee's number - and how that had been the difference between a dry lead and the agency gaining one of their most valuable assets over the last six months.

"I showed him my hand first. Not as a tactic, just…out of concern for him. I blew my cover." He'd gambled on Castillo - a stranger, who could have been the architect of his demise - and because of that trust, Castillo gambled right back on him. "It turned out to be the only reason I secured the asset today. I guess sometimes it pays to be stupidly trusting."

She smiled at him faintly, though made no move to wipe the tears from her face, almost leaving them as a show of penance. "Why did you do it?"

"I don't know." He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled a nervous laugh. "I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't a good person back in Lisbon. I haven't always made the most humane choices. But, I'm trying to be better. I don't — I don't want to be _him_ , you know?" He shrugged, trying hard not to picture Aaron's face the last time they shared the same air, when his father smirked at him victoriously from across a crowded courtroom. "I think the best way I could get back at my dad is to be the kind of person he could never be."

V grabbed Logan's hand and took a deep breath before speaking. "I can't tell you my real name, but when I was little, my mother used to call me Ron. I don't - I haven't seen her in years, she - left us. But, you could call me that, when we're alone. If you want. I'd like that."

Logan cupped her face and kissed her, the bitter taste of aspirin and sweet sherry still lingering on her lips. "It's really nice to meet you, Ron."

"You _are_ a soft touch," she whispered, lips still pursed as he pulled back, her pupils unfocused as she opened her eyes. "So, do you movie stars go to special schools for this kissing thing or is this more that you're selected on the basis of natural talent?"

The muscles in his shoulders relaxed at her change of mood. "Bit of a chicken and egg riddle, I'm afraid, but I'm sure if we really work hard at it, we could probably figure out which - came - first?" He reached over and gently pulled down the beret that had been covering her hair. A flaxen mane spilled out from underneath. "You're a blonde?"

Her brow creased, truly confused. "You do realize spies wear costumes sometimes, right?"

The hat was now crushed in his hand, but he was too dumbfounded to care. It seemed like every time he thought he had a good read on her, he learned something entirely new. She was endlessly fascinating.

An amused twitch lifted the corners of her mouth. "Oh, I get it. You have a _thing_ ."

"That depends." He tossed her hat to the floor, uncaring where it landed, and lowered his gaze. "Are you a natural blonde?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She teased, letting her thighs fall open.

"I think we've already established that." Logan was mindful of her injury as he pressed her down onto the mattress and stripped her khakis from her legs in one motion. "Does it still hurt?"

Her eyes were half lidded and heavy as she watched him strip her bare. "The booze makes the powder work faster."

"I know."

He didn't want to think about how he knew that medical tidbit. Nobody wants to think about their mother when they're in bed with a beautiful woman.

Lifting her sprained ankle to his lips, he pressed a gentle kiss there, earning him a soft moan. "Was that a good noise or—?"

"It doesn't hurt." Ron lifted her shirt over her head - revealing a white brassiere underneath - and threw it to the floor next to her hat. "Please continue."

"Are you ever not bossy?" He kissed his way past the bend of her knee toward the crease of her thigh, barely pausing before dragging his tongue past her opening.

"Holy fu—!" she bit back a shout as she began to writhe on the bed. "They teach you this at movie school, too?"

"Guess you're not an expert in everything, huh?" Logan murmured against her warm center, revelling in the shiver it elicited from her. He draped her legs over his shoulders and pulled her closer by her ass to get a better angle.

Her fingers tangled painfully in his hair as he alternated between sucking and licking her. "Oh my…fuck!"

He laughed out loud at her reaction, and she responded to the slight by grinding herself into his face. "If you think that's a punishment, you're sorely mista—"

"Get up here now," she hissed, pulling him up by his hair, nearly taking a chunk out in the process, "and get inside of me."

She kissed him messily, licking the last traces of herself from his lips. He wasn't sure he'd ever been this turned on in his life.

Logan fumbled for his zipper like a schoolboy, not even bothering to take his trousers down. He pulled himself out and eagerly pushed inside of her, willing himself not to come right away.

They gasped into each other's mouths at the contact, exchanging the same air.

Ron's eyes glowed almost supernaturally blue in the dim light of the room. She kept them open, watching him, as he thrust up into her.

Her legs curled around his thighs, pulling him closer, but she still kept him at arms length. She was cautious and hungry, like a cornered animal who hadn't eaten in weeks. That same want from the first night they met was still present, but this time there was fear there, too.

"I'm not going to last long," he panted into her hair.

Her teeth scraped the underside of his jaw, sending a jolt of electricity directly to his cock. "Me either."

His control was on a knife's edge, the telltale quickening beginning to tighten his balls. "I - God, I'm going to—"

Logan pulled out just in time, spending himself on her bare stomach with a curse. "Fuck!"

She kissed the side of his head, holding him as he shook through his climax. "It's okay. It's okay."

"Not yet, it's not." He lowered himself back down between her legs, then flicked his tongue against her as slipped two of his fingers inside, curling them back and forth until she started to quiver in his hands.

"Oh." Her breathing picked up, it didn't take much to bring her back to the edge when she'd barely left it.

"Come in my mouth," he demanded, leaving no room for argument. "Do it."

As if following orders, she almost immediately did - loudly - with a cry that petered off into a distressing whimper.

Logan wiped his chin with the back of his hand and collapsed next to her on the bed as they both struggled to catch their breath.

A sudden wave of embarrassment fell over him for coming so early, he threw his forearm over his eyes. "I'm sorry about...you know."

He felt the mattress shift, she had turned to face him. "Sorry for what? Giving me the best sex I've ever had?"

He raised his arm a bit and peeked out from under it at her, perplexed. "But, I—"

"You realize most men don't notice if a woman enjoys it, right?" Ron pressed her thumb to his bottom lip before dropping a chaste kiss there. "You notice a lot of things most men don't."

He'd wanted to ask her what she had meant by it, but he never got the chance.

By the time he woke up she was gone.

* * *

The sound of the front door slamming shut woke Logan from a dreamless slumber. He was disoriented at first, unsure of where he was, but that wasn't an unusual feeling nowadays.

His pants were still halfway down his thighs, dried cum still on the sheets, but he couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed, not even with the unimpressed way Weevil was looking at him.

"You are a goddamn idiot. You know that, right?" Weevil stood over him, hands fisted at his waist, razing him with the weight of his disappointment.

Logan tucked himself back into his boxers and sat up, determined to present an unashamed front. "I don't know, I thought it was a pretty smart move at the time."

"Yeah, you would." Noticing the open bottle of sherry, Weevil grabbed it and took a swig, wincing instantly at the taste. "Too bad she doesn't have a sugar daddy to keep her in the good shit like I do."

"I assume she pulled an Irish goodbye on me?" Logan looked around the room, unable to find a trace of her, other than the leftover liquor and a blank pad of paper from a Dutch hotel. He was disappointed, but not remotely surprised.

"That's her way." Weevil handed the bottle to Logan and then plopped on the bed next to him, elbows leaning on his knees. "Are you Irish? Because you are one lucky motherfucker. Castillo turned out to be a goldmine."

"Did he? I'll drink to that." He lifted the bottle of sherry in a toast and took a long drag off the bottle, body clenching from the cloying aftertaste. "I know what I did was…unorthodox."

Weevil cut him a look and grabbed the bottle back. "I think the word you're looking for is suicidal. But man, did it pay off in spades. Got a good name of somebody with an in to the SS. A great name. You're not going to believe the name he gave us, she's world fucking famous."

Logan blinked his eyes impatiently. "You're going to actually have to give me the name, Weevil, in order for me to be impressed."

Weevil licked his lips like he was about to tuck into a juicy steak. "In Germany, they still call her Karolina Bischof."

"Carrie Bishop?" The sinking feeling in the pit of Logan's stomach began to rise into his throat. He grabbed the bottle of booze roughly back from his friend.

"She's a legend, right? Wait - you actually know her?" That little tidbit earned Logan a raised eyebrow.

Logan tipped the sherry down his throat, finishing it off with a stifled belch. "You might say that."

Weevil's eyebrow fell, quickly getting the message. "Well, shit."

* * *

The trees that flew past the windows stretched taller and leaner the further North Logan and Weevil traveled, as the ground became more elevated and rocky.

They'd switched trains at Madrid - stopping for a quick bite to eat - and then once again at La Concha, for the direct train to Paris along the Northern corridor of the Pyrenees.

By the time they'd finally located their private passenger car, there was already somebody sitting there.

"Hey!" Weevil bobbed his head in her direction, clearly pleased with the surprise. "I was wondering when you were going to pop up."

"Mac." Logan grinned as he followed Weevil over the threshold, sliding the door closed behind them.

She was one of the few people Logan knew from the agency and was genuinely happy to see another friendly face after so long out in the field.

"Moneybags," she drawled, her usual sarcastic expression screwed into place as she took in his disheveled appearance. "Hmm, yesterday's hero is looking a little worse for wear."

"Well, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, 'Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy'. My tragedy was a really cheap bottle of cooking sherry and a mattress with a broken spring." He flopped ungracefully onto the wooden bench across from her.

"However do you cope?" Her expression was droll, but there was fondness beneath it, then turned to their other compatriot, head already back in the game. "Weevil, I brought your Bona fide. How do you feel about being Catalan this time?"

Weevil stroked his early five o'clock shadow. "Pretty fucking bad, seeing as I don't speak the language."

"Great, because you're from Zaragoza." From the small suitcase open on the seat next to her, she pulled a brown, leather pouch and handed it to him. "I assume you speak Spanish?

Ignoring the rhetorical question, Weevil flipped open his new passport and waggled his eyebrows at what he read there. "Enrique Coronado Gonzales. I like it. I sound classy. You got some pocket litter for me, too?"

"Not yet, but I've got some pocket litter for him." Mac gestured to Logan, then dug through her suitcase again and produced a white paper bag with a Red Cross symbol on the front.

Logan was confused, there was no way he could possibly go undercover. Not in Paris, of all places. "I thought I was going in naked?"

"Yeah, Romeo. That's the point." She forced the sack into his hands. "You go in naked a little too often."

Inside the bag were dozens of small, round tins with 'pro-kit' printed in military block letters on the front. "I thought there was a latex shortage."

She stared at him, humorless, like she hadn't just casually handed him several months worth of rubbers. "I'm willing to make an exception for you."

Weevil, who was sitting next to Logan, peered into the bag and immediately lost his composure.

"Shut the fuck up, man," Logan warned, through a tense smile.

The other man tried to school his featured into neutral expression, but instead ended up looking like he was suffering from bad gas.

Logan shook the bag with a clatter, exasperated. "Am I being watched?"

Mac leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "You're an asset. Of course you're being watched. But that's not what this is about."

"I'm a grown man. When I signed up for this gig, nobody mentioned anything about the OSS being a bunch of Peeping Toms."

She ruffled her hand through her hair, obviously frustrated. "Look, Agent V isn't just a coworker, she's my closest friend. She already takes too many risks, I don't need you to be another one of them."

Logan wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that new piece of information. Mac said each mission was 'eyes only', said nobody knew the team's final objective, but both Weevil and Mac knew things about Ron that made Logan think his presence there might be a piece of something bigger. He suddenly felt like the only one not in on a private joke.

"I had a medical workup before I came here. You know I'm," he glanced at Weevil, who was trying and failing not to laugh into his hands, "clean."

Mac clicked her tongue at Logan like an old school marm. "Please tell me I don't have to embarrass all three of us by giving you the birds and bees talk in the middle of this passenger car?"

Snickering erupted next to Logan, which Logan silenced with a swift body check. "I am willing to give you all the cash I have on me for this conversation to end right now. Besides, I don't even know when or if I'm going to see her again."

"You will," Mac said, not looking too thrilled about it. "Tomorrow night, at 'Le Beau Rêve'. 2100 hours."

"She's coming with me to meet with Carrie Bishop?" The prospect of being with both women in the same room sent Logan into a choking fit.

When Logan was 12, his best friend Dick broke his mother's Ming vase playing baseball in the house, and then Logan tried to bury it in the backyard to cover up his friend's 'crime'.

The fact that Logan never actually dated either woman didn't stop the irrational guilt from creeping in. He still felt disloyal somehow, like some kind of cad.

Mac's forehead wrinkled with concern until the coughing ceased. "No. you're meeting Miss Bishop alone. Agent V has, uh, other commitments."

"At the same club? Who?"

"That's classified."

Logan slammed his hand against the seat with a curse. "This is bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. I know you know more than you're telling me. And considering I'm putting my ass on the line for this, I think I deserve to know what I'm walking into."

Mac gestured to Weevil. "You're not walking in alone. You'll have backup."

"You're unbelievable." Logan's hand throbbed from where it made contact with the wood. He focused on his external pain to distract from what he was feeling inside. An old tactic, but one he knew worked. "At least tell me what happened yesterday, then. What was Agent V doing at the the Plaza de la Corredera?"

Mac took a deep breath, then acquiesced with a curt nod. "We received last minute intel from one of our floaters that you and Lanzo were being followed. Agent V got in just this morning from Gibraltar, so we sent her over to check things out."

"Did she know what my mission was or that I would even be there?"

"There wasn't time to explain. The man's room turned up an arsenal, we didn't know what he had planned. We just gave her a description and pointed her in the right direction."

Well, that explained Ron's paranoid suspicion at Logan's seemingly random presence there. "Do you know now what he had planned?"

"The identification the man had on him said he was Swiss, but the papers - they're close, but not exactly the right card stock, inelegant work." Her nose wrinkled in distaste. "So, all that really tells us is that he's anything but Swiss. The coroner might have something for me to go off later today."

"Like what?"

"Stomach contents. Scars. Body rituals like circumcision or tattoos. Fillings, preferably. The composition of dental amalgam differs from country to country. Once we get a nationality, that narrows the field quite a bit as far as what the objective might have been."

With a hiss of air and the high-pitched scraping of metal, the train rattled to a slow stop at the first station over the border into France.

Mac clicked her briefcase shut and rose from her seat. "Logan, I know you're worried you've been made, but if Gehrhart suspected you were working with us, it would be far more efficient just to cut you out of the loop - or better yet - keep you for purposes of spreading disinformation to the OSS. You're much too high profile to just kill off on a hunch. Probably." She shrugged, reached for the door handle and paused, turning back to him with a soft glimmer in her eye. "Either way. Rest assured, we'll be watching you."

* * *

TRANSLATIONS

.

" _Este no es el momento para el romance, los recién casados. Alguien ha sido herido."_

This is not the time for romance, newlyweds. Somebody has been hurt.

.

" _Lo siento, señora."_

I'm sorry, madame.

.

 _"Me acuerdo de este sentimiento."_

I remember this feeling.

.

" _Señor, deberías llevar a tu esposa a casa, ahora."_

Sir, you should take your wife home, now.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you so much to all of you who left comments – I appreciate every single one.**

 **Are you still with me? If you have the time, please let me know what you think!**


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